


Damage Control

by Philomytha



Series: Alys/Simon fics [18]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-13
Updated: 2011-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alys and Simon after Miles's dinner party in <em>A Civil Campaign</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Damage Control

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Professor.

Finally the Koudelkas left in a flurry of accusations and angry voices, the last few guests followed, variously entertained or flustered, and Alys turned back to the dining room. Simon had risen from the table and was standing in a window, gazing out, his spine rigid with unhappiness. Alys crossed the room to join him, drawing the curtain aside so that she could stand with him.

"It's not your fault," she said quietly.

"Really?" Simon said, his voice flat and grimly ironic. "Explain to me how this is not my fault."

"It is not your fault that Miles decided to tell everyone in the room except Madame Vorsoisson that he was courting her. It is not your fault he handled the situation so disastrously. And Mark and Kareen's little embarrassment was not your fault either, nor those revolting insects." She put an arm around Simon's shoulders, but he shrugged it off. Alys pursed her lips. "You made what you thought was an innocent comment. If Miles hadn't acted like an idiot, it would have been an innocent comment. This is Miles's disaster."

"Miles's disasters are always my disasters," Simon muttered. "And if I'd been... if I hadn't lost... I could have put the clues together, once. I wouldn't have made a slip like that, before."

Alys winced then, because it was true, and because she'd never heard Simon lament the chip like that. "Perhaps. But still. Miles made his own mistakes."

"He's Vorkosigan. It's my job to make his mistakes less severe, not worse."

"You're retired. It's your job to show up to dinner parties and make conversation. Which is what you were doing."

Simon merely shook his head and turned slightly away. Alys sighed. It had been an unmitigated disaster.

"I've seen worse, you know," she said after a moment. "I was at a party where the hostess--Madame Vorventa--caught her husband in flagrante with the upstairs maid on the dining room table just before we were all supposed to sit down at eat. And one where the butler was dead drunk and fell down and started snoring on the floor in the middle of all the guests whilst he was passing round canapés. And one where--"

"I take your point," Simon said, the slightest flick of humour in his voice. It died away as he continued, "But you've never been the one caught out, have you?"

"You," Alys said firmly, "were not the person who embarrassed himself this evening."

Simon said nothing, his face turned away. Alys sighed and decided to leave him be for a while. Generally he faced his lapses of memory with the philosophical calm that was second nature to someone who had been accustomed to cope with four life-threatening crises before breakfast, but sometimes they got under his skin, and it wasn't hard to see why this one had. Embarrassing mistakes in front of her were one thing; mistakes in front of a Vorkosigan were another.

On that thought, the door opened, and Alys' lips tightened. Aral and Cordelia were evidently home. Their timing, she thought, was terrible. Normally she was always happy to see them, but right now Aral was the last person Simon would want to face. Cordelia followed her husband in, and before Alys could wave them away again, Cordelia was saying, "And here are the last of the victims. You've had quite an evening. Good to see you both."

Simon whirled around, straightening automatically to attention like a man stepping into a suit of armour. Alys focused her gaze on Aral, projecting _back off_ as hard as she could, but Aral was stooping down, his lips quirking. He picked something up from the edge of the skirting board. It was wriggling. Simon moved forward by instinct, collected a water glass from the table and offered it wordlessly, and Aral dropped the Vorkosigan Bug inside. It scrabbled at the edges, and Simon put an unused plate on top, though Alys doubted the thing could climb. She certainly hoped not.

Cordelia looked into the glass. "Those are certainly going to be an interesting addition to the local fauna."

Aral made a faint choking sound in his throat. "If that biologist wasn't a guest in my house, I'd set my Armsmen on him," he muttered, staring at his sigil on the bug's back. "Do you think Miles is rubbing off on Mark, dear Captain?"

"I'm not sure you can blame either of them for the insects. Everything else, mind you..."

"Well, perhaps." Aral looked at them both. "Your name came up a lot in the tangled accounts of this evening I've already heard. What exactly happened there, Simon?"

Alys frowned deeply, but Simon had already locked gazes with Aral in his old Reporting In stance.

"I betrayed him," Simon said. "I misunderstood what I'd been told about Miles and Madame Vorsoisson, and I gave his secret away."

"Miles," said Alys very sharply across this interpretation of events, "failed to inform Simon of his exceedingly ill-advised plot to capture Madame Vorsoisson's affections, and then failed to exercise sufficient control over conversation at his dinner party to prevent Simon from falling into the trap he had laid."

Simon gave her a faintly frustrated look. "Alys--" he began.

"This is not your area of expertise, Simon. It is mine. And I know exactly what I saw this evening. Miles allowed his guests to ambush him repeatedly, failed to prepare himself for predictable contingencies and then reacted in the most idiotic possible way to the ensuing difficulties. If he'd designed covert ops missions this badly, you'd have torn strips off him.

Distracted, Simon said, "Do _you_ prepare for guests showing up with butter bugs when you host dinner parties?"

"I certainly know how to cope with inappropriate gifts, not to mention scientists who despite possessing a great many fine intellectual qualities have an inability to grasp the customs and norms of social conversation. Miles should have made certain Enrique was seated either next to people who could talk a great deal whilst he listened, or next to people he wished to bore and then prompted Enrique to describe his science. He wouldn't even have remembered about the butter bugs, and he would have never made that unfortunate comment about Kareen and Lord Mark."

This lecture brought a hint of warmth to Simon's eyes, and Alys raised her chin slightly, pleased. He did always admire her in full social-dragon mode, she knew. There was a faint smile hovering around Cordelia's lips too. Aral attempted a recovery.

"I don't know what Mark was thinking of," he said sternly, "inviting Kareen to go to the Orb with him. She's barely out of pigtails."

Cordelia opened her mouth, but Alys had control of this conversation now. "I daresay they were thinking it would be... enjoyable," she said. She cast a glance at Simon. "I have every intention of inviting Simon to accompany me to the Orb once this wedding is over. I'm sure we will have a wonderful time."

There was a sudden silence.

Whatever Aral had intended to say in response to this was drowned by Cordelia's delighted laugh. But Alys' attention was on Simon. He turned slowly to face her, looking at her properly for the first time since this whole upset had started.

"Do you now?" he said softly. His voice dropped lower. "How can I refuse? I would be delighted, my lady."

Alys began to smile, and Simon stepped closer. Out of the corner of her eye, Alys saw Cordelia, still grinning, put a hand on Aral's arm and firmly turn him back towards the door. She made a little 'carry on' gesture to Alys with her other hand. "We'll be in the library with the Vorthyses," she said cheerfully. "See you later."

The door closed behind them.

Alys pulled Simon to her. He held back for a moment, looking into her face. "So you don't think I did anything wrong?"

"You're retired now, my dear," she said. "You're an innocent bystander these days. And Miles tends to get them hurt. I don't like that."

"An innocent bystander," he echoed. "Only you would say a thing like that." He bent his neck and kissed her, his closed lips betraying a last strand of tension in him. Alys moved closer, her arms circling him, and he stepped back against the wall. Alys felt him relax with solid stone behind him and a clear field of view across the room to the door, and gave a little laugh, because that was so Simon. She pressed against him, her own tension melting into his arms. His lips parted.

"You're trying," he said a little breathlessly a few moments later, "to--ah!--distract me."

Alys' leg slid between his, and her hand curled around the back of his head, thumb running over his jaw. "Is it working?"

"I think," he said, holding his voice steady with an effort, "you should ... keep trying."

So she did.


End file.
